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01/09/2003

Miscues and Feathers

After a two-week vacation I’m back, but in a rather grumpy
mood. I had been having problems with my desktop computer
and celebrated New Year’s Eve by reinstalling Windows 95.
Now my computer recognizes neither my CD-ROM drive nor my
modem and I can no longer cut, copy or paste! New Year’s Day
was spent configuring two laptops to take over the desktop
chores. Then a letter from Lucent arrived advising that they
were canceling the death benefit that was part of my retirement
package from Bell Labs. My heirs will be the poorer. Next, an
ice storm killed our power and heat for about 13 hours in the
freezing weather. Worse, the power returned for a few hours
during the outage but at a very low voltage. Fortunately, old
Bortrum remembered that low voltage can damage motors and I
had thrown all the circuit breakers for the furnace and other
electrical equipment.

One bright spot during this period was the triumph of our New
Jersey Jets over the Colts. Somewhat heartened, I composed my
first Bortrum column of 2003 and gave it to my wife for her
comments. A mistake - she proclaimed it to be the most boring
column I’ve ever written! You can appreciate that I was not only
a tad grumpy but also skeptical about prospects for 2003. Then
came the sickening New Jersey Giants-San Francisco playoff
game and the blown call by the officials robbing the Giants of
another chance to kick a game-winning field goal. How bad can
it get?

No doubt that game will live on in infamy for generations of
Giants’ fans. With many to blame for the loss, will one player or
official become the goat in a “canonical story” in the years to
come? What is a canonical story and how can the search for a
goat in a sporting event be related to science? To shed light on
these questions, let’s turn to a book that I received for Christmas.
The book is the late Stephen Jay Gould’s "I Have Landed", the
tenth and final collection in a series of 300 consecutive essays he
wrote for Natural History magazine.

One of the essays deals with canonical stories, defined by Gould
as stories that have achieved the status of truth and the stamp of
authority. However, these stories are biased by our human
tendency to want developments to proceed along certain patterns
and with attributes of valor. Or, lacking valor, with attributes of
dishonor. My take on a canonical story is that we like to
simplify our recollections of major events into memorable short
stories that hide the complex circumstances surrounding those
events.

Apropos of the Giants fiasco, Gould cites the canonical story that
emerged from the famous (if you''re a Mets fan) or infamous (if
you''re a Red Sox fan) incident of the 6th game of the 1986
World Series. Thirteen years later, an article in the New York
Post of October 13, 1999 described the incident thusly: "….
Mookie Wilson''s grounder that rolled through the legs of Bill
Buckner in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. That happened
after the Red Sox were just one out away from winning the
World Series." Similar accounts implying that Buckner was
solely responsible for losing the Series have prevailed over the
years.

To set the record straight, it was the ninth inning of the sixth
game and the Mets had already tied the score! The Sox were not
one out from winning the game. The Buckner error, while it
gave the Mets the winning run, did not forego the possibility that
the Red Sox could have won the Series in the final 7th game.
Yet, the poor Mr. Buckner is given sole credit for continuing the
curse of the Bambino, dating from when the Red Sox traded
Babe Ruth to the Yankees. This canonical story obscures the
fact that Buckner was a valiant player who could hardly bend
over and was usually removed in the late innings for defensive
purposes. The Red Sox manager only kept him in so that his
regulars could all savor the moment of winning the Series.
Indeed, according to Gould, the Met’s scoreboard had already
graciously flashed a congratulatory message to the Sox on their
win prior to the Bruckner miscue! Who remembers how they
lost the 7th game? I admit that I don’t, and I watched the game.

Gould, as we discussed in an earlier column, is best known for
his role in proposing the "punctuated" theory of evolution. In the
book, he associates our desire to simplify events in canonical
stories with a tendency to view evolution in similar terms.
Specifically, evolution is popularly viewed as a straight-line
process with the valorous successive species replacing inferior
dominant species, culminating with our Homo sapiens species as
the ultimate product. Gould is grumpily adamant in arguing that
we shouldn’t ascribe to our own species a favored place in
evolution and decries the conclusion that we are superior to the
dinosaurs. After all, the dinos ruled the earth for 130 million
years, while we’ve only been around for half a million. And we
mammals only lucked out thanks to that asteroid hitting the earth
65 million years ago. (I’ve read recently that there is some
evidence that the dinosaurs may have owed their own success to
a similar big impact.)

Gould stresses that evolution does not occur in a straight line but
is the branching of bushes with many branches and twigs, some
of which flourish while others die out. Take the case of birds,
popularly cited as dinosaurs living among us today. Gould
objects that, while the association of birds with dinosaurs is
probably legitimate, birds are definitely not descended from
those huge dinos that roamed the earth prior to extinction.
Instead, birds evolved from one or more of the twigs or branches
of the bush that harbored the dinosaur family. There were also
small dinosaur cousins to the big guys. It wouldn’t be too much
of a stretch to imagine a bird the size of an ostrich evolving from
a twig or branch of the smaller dino critters.

I was quite satisfied with Gould’s thesis. I still think it’s neat
that birds are related to those dinos, if only by a branch or twig.
And there certainly has been a slew of media and scientific
journal coverage of findings of dino fossils with feathers in
recent years. In a happier frame of mind, I kid you not, I had just
finished reading the Gould essay on the birds when I picked up
the February 2003 issue of Discover magazine. It contained an
interview with Alan Feduccia, ornithologist and evolutionary
biologist at the University of North Carolina.

Feduccia does not believe that birds descended from dinosaurs,
claiming the timeline is all wrong. In his view, the alleged
ancestors of birds lived some 25 to 80 million years after the first
known bird. That bird was Archaeopteryx, that big flying
creature that we’ve all seen pictured or parodied many times.
When it comes to the feathered fossils, Feduccia doesn’t think
most are really feathers; to him they look more like skin folds.
He also points out that in China, where most of the feathered
dino-bird activity is centered, fossil forgeries are big business
and fake fossils can bring in good money.

But what about cases where the feathers are clearly feathers?
Feduccia says that we have to be careful to be sure that the
feathers don’t belong to a flightless bird that has evolved from an
earlier flying bird. I have a couple ties purchased in New
Zealand; these ties have Kiwis on them. The Kiwi is an example
of a flightless bird that apparently evolved from a flying creature
when it found that it could get along fine in New Zealand, which
then had no natural predators for the Kiwi.

Now I’m grumpier. I love the idea that birds are living dinosaurs
and hate to see that link in doubt. I was pleased to read that
Feduccia would change his mind if a true feathered dino fossil
could be found that lived much earlier to fit his proper timeline.
I’m hoping someone is digging furiously to find such a fossil.

Happy New Year!

Allen F. Bortrum



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-01/09/2003-      
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Dr. Bortrum

01/09/2003

Miscues and Feathers

After a two-week vacation I’m back, but in a rather grumpy
mood. I had been having problems with my desktop computer
and celebrated New Year’s Eve by reinstalling Windows 95.
Now my computer recognizes neither my CD-ROM drive nor my
modem and I can no longer cut, copy or paste! New Year’s Day
was spent configuring two laptops to take over the desktop
chores. Then a letter from Lucent arrived advising that they
were canceling the death benefit that was part of my retirement
package from Bell Labs. My heirs will be the poorer. Next, an
ice storm killed our power and heat for about 13 hours in the
freezing weather. Worse, the power returned for a few hours
during the outage but at a very low voltage. Fortunately, old
Bortrum remembered that low voltage can damage motors and I
had thrown all the circuit breakers for the furnace and other
electrical equipment.

One bright spot during this period was the triumph of our New
Jersey Jets over the Colts. Somewhat heartened, I composed my
first Bortrum column of 2003 and gave it to my wife for her
comments. A mistake - she proclaimed it to be the most boring
column I’ve ever written! You can appreciate that I was not only
a tad grumpy but also skeptical about prospects for 2003. Then
came the sickening New Jersey Giants-San Francisco playoff
game and the blown call by the officials robbing the Giants of
another chance to kick a game-winning field goal. How bad can
it get?

No doubt that game will live on in infamy for generations of
Giants’ fans. With many to blame for the loss, will one player or
official become the goat in a “canonical story” in the years to
come? What is a canonical story and how can the search for a
goat in a sporting event be related to science? To shed light on
these questions, let’s turn to a book that I received for Christmas.
The book is the late Stephen Jay Gould’s "I Have Landed", the
tenth and final collection in a series of 300 consecutive essays he
wrote for Natural History magazine.

One of the essays deals with canonical stories, defined by Gould
as stories that have achieved the status of truth and the stamp of
authority. However, these stories are biased by our human
tendency to want developments to proceed along certain patterns
and with attributes of valor. Or, lacking valor, with attributes of
dishonor. My take on a canonical story is that we like to
simplify our recollections of major events into memorable short
stories that hide the complex circumstances surrounding those
events.

Apropos of the Giants fiasco, Gould cites the canonical story that
emerged from the famous (if you''re a Mets fan) or infamous (if
you''re a Red Sox fan) incident of the 6th game of the 1986
World Series. Thirteen years later, an article in the New York
Post of October 13, 1999 described the incident thusly: "….
Mookie Wilson''s grounder that rolled through the legs of Bill
Buckner in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. That happened
after the Red Sox were just one out away from winning the
World Series." Similar accounts implying that Buckner was
solely responsible for losing the Series have prevailed over the
years.

To set the record straight, it was the ninth inning of the sixth
game and the Mets had already tied the score! The Sox were not
one out from winning the game. The Buckner error, while it
gave the Mets the winning run, did not forego the possibility that
the Red Sox could have won the Series in the final 7th game.
Yet, the poor Mr. Buckner is given sole credit for continuing the
curse of the Bambino, dating from when the Red Sox traded
Babe Ruth to the Yankees. This canonical story obscures the
fact that Buckner was a valiant player who could hardly bend
over and was usually removed in the late innings for defensive
purposes. The Red Sox manager only kept him in so that his
regulars could all savor the moment of winning the Series.
Indeed, according to Gould, the Met’s scoreboard had already
graciously flashed a congratulatory message to the Sox on their
win prior to the Bruckner miscue! Who remembers how they
lost the 7th game? I admit that I don’t, and I watched the game.

Gould, as we discussed in an earlier column, is best known for
his role in proposing the "punctuated" theory of evolution. In the
book, he associates our desire to simplify events in canonical
stories with a tendency to view evolution in similar terms.
Specifically, evolution is popularly viewed as a straight-line
process with the valorous successive species replacing inferior
dominant species, culminating with our Homo sapiens species as
the ultimate product. Gould is grumpily adamant in arguing that
we shouldn’t ascribe to our own species a favored place in
evolution and decries the conclusion that we are superior to the
dinosaurs. After all, the dinos ruled the earth for 130 million
years, while we’ve only been around for half a million. And we
mammals only lucked out thanks to that asteroid hitting the earth
65 million years ago. (I’ve read recently that there is some
evidence that the dinosaurs may have owed their own success to
a similar big impact.)

Gould stresses that evolution does not occur in a straight line but
is the branching of bushes with many branches and twigs, some
of which flourish while others die out. Take the case of birds,
popularly cited as dinosaurs living among us today. Gould
objects that, while the association of birds with dinosaurs is
probably legitimate, birds are definitely not descended from
those huge dinos that roamed the earth prior to extinction.
Instead, birds evolved from one or more of the twigs or branches
of the bush that harbored the dinosaur family. There were also
small dinosaur cousins to the big guys. It wouldn’t be too much
of a stretch to imagine a bird the size of an ostrich evolving from
a twig or branch of the smaller dino critters.

I was quite satisfied with Gould’s thesis. I still think it’s neat
that birds are related to those dinos, if only by a branch or twig.
And there certainly has been a slew of media and scientific
journal coverage of findings of dino fossils with feathers in
recent years. In a happier frame of mind, I kid you not, I had just
finished reading the Gould essay on the birds when I picked up
the February 2003 issue of Discover magazine. It contained an
interview with Alan Feduccia, ornithologist and evolutionary
biologist at the University of North Carolina.

Feduccia does not believe that birds descended from dinosaurs,
claiming the timeline is all wrong. In his view, the alleged
ancestors of birds lived some 25 to 80 million years after the first
known bird. That bird was Archaeopteryx, that big flying
creature that we’ve all seen pictured or parodied many times.
When it comes to the feathered fossils, Feduccia doesn’t think
most are really feathers; to him they look more like skin folds.
He also points out that in China, where most of the feathered
dino-bird activity is centered, fossil forgeries are big business
and fake fossils can bring in good money.

But what about cases where the feathers are clearly feathers?
Feduccia says that we have to be careful to be sure that the
feathers don’t belong to a flightless bird that has evolved from an
earlier flying bird. I have a couple ties purchased in New
Zealand; these ties have Kiwis on them. The Kiwi is an example
of a flightless bird that apparently evolved from a flying creature
when it found that it could get along fine in New Zealand, which
then had no natural predators for the Kiwi.

Now I’m grumpier. I love the idea that birds are living dinosaurs
and hate to see that link in doubt. I was pleased to read that
Feduccia would change his mind if a true feathered dino fossil
could be found that lived much earlier to fit his proper timeline.
I’m hoping someone is digging furiously to find such a fossil.

Happy New Year!

Allen F. Bortrum